ABC’s Mark Scott Takes on the World – Breaking News

The ABC will seek more money and  commitment from government to allow the public broadcaster to carry its services to the world in an ambitious roll out involving many new overseas news bureaus, Arabic language services and ultimately a new satellite.

At a speech at Macquarie University tomorrow night  ABC Managing Director Mark Scott will outline a plan to place the ABC at the forefront of Australia’s “soft diplomacy”, with resources and reach to  rival the BBC and CNN as a  provider of news and information in our region.

Scott’s speech is significant both in its own right and as another example of the ABC’s increasingly assertive brand of media politics.

It is  a pre-emptive strike against the commercial television stations seeking to win the Government contract for the Australian Network television presence – which is up for renewal in 18 months time.

The speech is also a continuation of Scott’s strategy of marrying the ABC’s aspirations to other aspects of Government policy. His pitch for funding in the last budget round was largely organised around the Government’s need to encourage take up of digital television technology and the rationale for the National Broadband Network.

In the  speech tomorrow night, Scott places the ABC’s international presence in the context of Rudd’s moves to create the G20 as the pre-eminent global institution for economic policy making. Scott will say:

We have an important role to play and we have to use all the tools at our disposal to continue to do so – one of these tools is soft diplomacy – using the media to put our nation’s culture, values and policies on show.

Scott will announce that the ABC’s Australia Network international television presence, which is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is to be merged with Radio Australia to become a single “brand”, working seamlessly with online content, podcasting and internet based catch up services.

He will argue that the government needs to spend more money on international broadcasting to become the dominant regional provider of news, information and English language learning material. Without more investment, he says, Australia will risk being overtaken and dominated by China, India and other countries of the region.

Scott is (although he doesn’t say it in so many words) taking the fight up to pay and commercial free to air television. He is positioning public broadcasting as indispensable to Australia’s national interests at a time when many see the ABC’s claim on the taxpayer purse as less justifiable in the new era of media plenty, and when pay television providers are arguing that they can do most of what the ABC does without calling on the public purse.

Scott lays out three steps to enhance Australia’s regional media presence, starting with five new regional news bureaus to make a total of 14 in Asia, the Pacific and India – more than either CNN or the BBC.

In our sights are the two biggest regional markets – China and India. We are intent on securing the all important “landing rights” for the service in China. And we are concious of the need to significantly expand our presence in what is now the third largest television market in the world, India.

Step two, Scott says, would be to expand into Africa and the Middle East with additional news bureaus and Arabic language content for radio and online.

Step three would be a roll out into Latin America, which would require carriage on a new satellite. Also on the cards is a use of broadband delivery to break into the North American and European markets, to find a place amidst their saturation subscription television markets.

Scott describes the blueprint as ambitious, but lists the increasing amounts being spent by other G20 countries  on their international media presence.

Even a doubling of our existing effort adds up to less than half of the budget of Baz Luhmann’s Australia. And for that money, we would be able to showcase the best of Australia, our news, sport and entertainment, our values and our culture, our democracy, round the clock, day in day out, in tens of millions of homes, across the region, across the world.

In our view, a relatively modest investment, certainly in comparison to the vast sums being spent by our fellow members of the G20, would yield immediate, tangible benefits.

Without directly mentioning the challenge from pay television for government money, Scott argues that only the ABC can deliver the benefits.

When you look at the expansion of international broadcasting as an arm of soft diplomacy, Governments are using their public broadcasters to do this work. You shouldn’t outsource your diplomatic efforts.

He argues that the ABC is better placed for the task because it is free of any commercial agenda “that could conflict with its public duty role.”

Scott is giving so many landmark speeches recently that even he is getting the names muddled up. In the AN Smith at Melbourne University a couple of weeks ago, he laid into Murdoch and reflected on the demise of media empires. Tomorrow morning Scott will be talking again on new media at the Media140 conference in Sydney. There will be more announcements there – watch this space.

But the speech scheduled for tomorrow night is a doozy. Scott signals he thinks the Government should spend up to twice as much on the international media effort, and give it all to the ABC.

Expect return fire shortly from pay and free to air commercial television interests. You read it here first.